(Most of this post was originally published in the Aero Vintage November 2015 B-17 News page. It’s a good story and I thought it worth

Being designed in the mid-1930s, the B-17 enjoyed, at least initially, some of the rapid improvements in engine technology that occurred during the decade that

So this is the story of another obscure civil B-17, one was the only specifically modified to transport live tropical fish. Apart from that unusual

From 1950 through the early 1980s, Bolivia came to operate 26 B-17s as cargo transports, mostly ‘meat-haulers’ that transported freshly slaughtered beef from sea-level airstrips

The year is 1960 and the place is Dallas. The mournful wind that sweeps across the flat plains of north central Texas whistles through the

During World War II, the automotive company Studebaker built nearly 68,000 R-1820 engines from one of its production plants in South Bend, Indiana. By the

Myth #1: There was a prototype XB-17 Boeing built a prototype four-engine bomber to meet Army specification 98-201 dated July 18, 1934, and Boeing designated

This is a short story about another obscure B-17. It is short because little is known about why and how this airplane, B-17G s/n 42-102642,

Anyone who has spent time looking at the post-war trail left by the B-17 Flying Fortress knows about Pyote Army Air Field. The remote west

Unfortunately, it can’t really be called a surviving B-17 because there is so little left of it. Nonetheless, the trail of VB-17G 44-83316 through post-war

Most of the surplus B-17s that survived the scrapping period after the war have diverse tales to tell, and it is often surprising to see

In the course of doing some research on those B-17s transferred by the government to educational institutions in the early post-war years, I was made

For those who have an interest in such things, there are usually two B-17s that are given credit for being the first U.S. civil B-17.

A photo recently appeared on Facebook the raised a few questions. The identity of the B-17 depicted in the photo revealed just a few clues,

In Part 1, we looked at those B-17s that made it onto the U.S. civil register in the immediate post-war years. All of these aircraft

As most in the B-17 world now know, the EAA’s B-17 (44-85740, N5017N) has been disassembled at Punta Gorda, Florida, and is being trucked back

Yes, I am talking about the Bahama Triangle…the lesser-known and lower-powered cousin to the Bermuda Triangle. Instead of swallowing up TBM Avengers in a aura-driven,

In the post-war civil fleet, one of the most vital tasks performed by the B-17 was that of an aerial tanker, something the airplane did

Granted, a bicycle won’t help you here unless you are very brave and perhaps a little warped. But, for a B-17 Guy or Gal, it

There was a time in the post-war period when the Navy was desperateto get its hands on B-17s…any B-17s anywhere…making it desperate enough to come

At the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. was the dominant air power, by far, over the rest of world’s military forces. That diminished

For the U.S. military, the Boeing B-17s was primarily operated by the Army Air Forces during World War II. A sizeable number of B-17s continued

In an obscure little corner of the B-17 story are the B-17s used by the air arm of the Dominican Republic in the late 1940s

The B-17 soldiered on with the Army Air Forces and, later, United States Air Force (USAF) after World War II ended in 1945. Though immediately